Francoise Nielly lives in a world of images. 
She has explored the different facets of "image" all her life , through painting, photography, roughs, illustrations and virtual, computer generated animated graphics. It is clear now that painting is her direction and her passion.
She gets her sense of space and construction from her father, who was an architect.
Growing up in the South of France where she lived between Cannes and Saint-Tropez, is never far from the light, the color sense and the atmosphere that permeates the South of France. This is coupled with her studies with her studies at the Beaux arts and Decorative Arts, and her sense of humor and of celebration.
Françoise Nielly's painting is expressive, exhibiting a brute force, a fascinating vital energy. Oil and knife combine tsculpt her images from a material that is , at the same time, biting and incisive, charnel and sensual. Whether she paints the human body or portraits, the artist takes a risk : her painting is sexual, her colors free, exuberant, surprising, even explosive, the cut of her knife incisive, her color pallet dazzling.
Françoise Nielly is a passionate woman who loves life, wide open spaces, sushi, blue lagoons, the Internet, humor, books, Paris, New-york and Vancouver. Resolutely inscribed in her epoch, she is an accomplished artist ; 20 years of artistic expression explain the maturity of her work and the perfect mastery of her art.
She lives and paints in Paris near Montmartre; shows and sells her work in Europe, in Canada and in the United States. Galerie Menouar 16, rue du Parc-Royal. Paris. 75003
Galerie Anne Cros. Pézenas. 34120.(artenîme)
Galerie Mensi et Rioux. Montreal
Galerie Bernd A. Lausberg/ Dusseldorf( Moscou Art Fairs/ toronto Art Fairs)
Galerie Mensi et Rioux. Fort Lauderdale . Floride.
Francoise Nielly née à Marseille ; études beaux arts et prepa art deco. Photographe, illustrateur dans la publicité pendant
15 ans. De nombreuses réalisations avec de grandes agences.
Vit et travaille à st ouen.
Expositions
2008: Galerie Claude PetitJean. Aix en Provence
2008: Galerie Opera. Monaco
2008 : Galerie Villa Del Arte. Barcelone
2008: ArtFair Newcastle. Galerie Villa del Arte
2008 : AAF London. England. galerie Villa del ARTE
2008 : ARTFAIR MIAMI. Galerie Villa Del Arte
2008 : Artenimes. Galerie ANNE CROS.
2007 : Galerie Menouar. Paris
2007 : Galerie de L’Europe. Paris
2006 : Galerie Menouar . Paris (événement artycolor. Givenchy)
2006 : Galerie Mensirioux. Montréal. Fort lauderdale
2006 : Galerie Lausberg. Toronto. (artfairs moscou 2006)
2006 : Galerie Anne Cros.pézénas (artenîmes)
2005 : Galerie Menouar. Paris
2005 : Galerie Anne Cros . Pézénas
2004 : Galerie Sibman . Paris
2004 : Galerie Menouar. Paris
2004 : Galerie Cinko. Paris
2003 : Galerie Stephane Olivier. ST Ouen
2002 : Galerie bdv . St Ouen
2002 : Galerie Gagnon. Montréal
2001 : Galerie Anne Cros. pezenas
2000 : Galerie de Bièvre. Paris
1999 : Galerie Michel Blais. Vancouver
1999 : Galerie Artitude.paris
1998 : Galerie Influences. Paris
1998 : Galerie Stely. St Tropez
1997 : Galerie Steglé. St Maxime
Parutions
Revues : blue, photo, newlook, feminitude.
Films: Portrait réalisé par Marie-Christine Heinrich, visible sur plusieurs chaines (2007)Emission ‘chic’ sur Arte en collaboration avec Nicolas Degennes (givenchy) fevrier 2007
It is less than easy today to discuss figurative painting "as such." One inevitably encounters the question of why, in this age of "big media" the artist has chosen to fall back on methods of representation deemed by some to be obsolete. "These media, we learn, are reality," writes Robert Hughes, "and all culture had better get on board." The traditional method painter is forced to choose between embracing the gadgetry of our times (a la James Rosenquist) or stubbornly refuting it by way of exclusion (take Alice Neel). Each approach carries with it its share of dogma, and what we are left with is a battle for representational supremacy–for the picture of our times, and, hence, for "reality"–with the former post-technological approach usually trumping the latter. But I would attest there is a third category for painters who, though not unaware of this debate, approach their own art making with a certain indifference toward such oppositions as modern vs. post-modern; who view the technological age as neither the "philistine counsel of despair" Hughes refers to, nor the only viable realm from which to draw artistic source material.
Françoise Nielly is one such artist. Though she approaches her subject with the raw psychological intensity of Lucian Freud (the artist Hughes is defending when he speaks of the above), her paintings unabashedly incorporate a design sensibility which could have come from no other place but contemporary media. Working primarily with the palette knife, Nielly is not afraid to let the rawness of her methods dictate composition. Whimsical color choices and an unapologetic sprightliness in her application of paint speaks to both a reverence for her subject and for the process of painting itself. Generally working in large format, in close to medium range to her figures, Nielly’s paintings demonstrate focused dexterity and impulse in equal measures. Her abstract works are like Robert Motherwell filtered through a mauve and violet lens. Her figurative paintings reveal a decidedly feminine appreciation for the male body, and a keen apprehension of the supercool aloofness surrounding contemporary fashionistas. Her intersecting slabs of vibrant pigments sometimes adhere to and sometimes shatter the Freud/Ingres maxim that the most beautiful thing in art "is a color adjacent to another which most closely resembles it." The result is canvasses which one moment invoke the devil-may-care expressivity of Chaim Soutine, and the next moment seem as though they might be well suited for the advertisement pages of Vogue magazine. A startling conflux of interwoven sensibilities to say the least. But, then, that is part of Nielly’s allure.
Exhibiting in St. Tropez, Paris, Montreal and Vancouver, Nielly’s approach carries with it the cross currents of a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Her subjects themselves–male and female–are as ethnically colorful as her palette (one cannot but suspect her zeal for radiant ultramarine and sumptuous alizarin was fostered by her Riviera upbringing). As if to further emphasize this savoir-faire internationalism, her individual paintings–which are otherwise catalogued in the formal tradition of "Untitled" serials–each carry with them the name of the country (France, Canada, Dubai, Germany) in which they now live in private collections. Her most recent work has evolved beyond the studio setting, incorporating loose fragments of contemporary visual culture and imaginatively synthesizing her fine and decorative arts training.
As she has matured as an artist, Nielly has become more dazzlingly experimental in her approach while further refining her technical mastery of the oil/knife medium. Two works from this past year (Untitled 363 and 321) see her delving into glittering cubistic and anthropomorphized expressions of the human form. Each is carried off with the same unforced conflation of traditional and current visual codes that elevates her beyond the squabbles over media and representation that have defined our era. By apologizing for neither her less-than-faddy choice in subject nor for the influence her culture has borne on her artistic sensibilities, she arrives at a point much closer to the "honest" ideal Alice Neel alludes to when she says, "I told the truth as I perceived it, and, considering the way one is bombarded by reality, did the best and most honest art of which I was capable." In the case of Françoise Nielly, it is the work that does the talking.
